


A Long Way Farther

by gudetamaa



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, Gen, Lots of Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prosthesis, but not till later chapters, there will be ships in this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 23:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12569036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gudetamaa/pseuds/gudetamaa
Summary: When a car crash kills Ed's mother and leaves his younger brother in a coma, his whole life changes. It isn't easy, of course, but this is the story of how Ed takes his life's really shitty lemons and makes some pretty good lemonade.





	A Long Way Farther

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my inaugural FMA work! I hope people will read this, even though I'm pretty sure the fandom is dead. 
> 
> I listened to a lot of Porter Robinson while writing this, so keep that in mind if you like soundtracks with your fics.

 

The very last thing Ed remembers is bickering with Al in the backseat of their mom’s old Honda on the way to soccer practice. 

*** 

Ed slowly blinked his eyes open. He was so tired…he hoped he hadn’t overslept and made himself late for school. _Mom will be so mad_ , he thought. _I can’t start oversleeping this early in the school year…_

“Ed?”

Ed struggled to keep his eyes open. Why was Winry in his bedroom? She had her own house next door to live in, so why was she in his?

“Ed!” Winry said again. Ed tried to turn his face in the direction he thought her voice was coming from, but his neck twinged violently in protest. Why did he hurt so much?

“Granny! Call the nurse and tell them Ed’s awake!” he heard Winry say, her voice distant. Ed’s eyes slid closed, despite his tired efforts, as if they had lead weights attached to them. Staying awake was too much work, he decided, as he lapsed into unconsciousness.

 ***

Ed slowly blinked his eyes open. It was bright in his room- too bright. His tired eyes squinted against the almost aggressive whiteness of the room- wait.

Since when was his bedroom all white? Last he’d checked, the walls of his tiny bedroom were a calming, if a bit boring, grey-blue. Was this some sort of prank? He was going to _kill_ Alphonse!

“Ed?”

_That was Winry’s voice_ , he realized. And she sounded- timid? Afraid? What was going on? Winry hadn’t sounded like that since her parents had died. Hazy, tired panic filled his mind. Had Granny Pinako died? Had _he_ died? Was he hearing Winry’s voice from beyond the grave?

“W- Winry?” Ed croaked, and winced. That single word felt like sandpaper scraping up his tender throat.

“Here,” Winry said, her concerned face moving into Ed’s view. She pressed a straw to his lips, and eagerly he drank from it. The water that greeted his parched mouth was cold and felt better than anything he’d ever drank.

“Granny’s called the nurse again. She’ll be by to take a look at you soon,” Winry said.

_Nurse?_ Ed thought, confused.

“Wh-,” his voice cracked, and he took another long sip of water and then tried again.

“What happened?” he asked. “Where am I?”

“You- You’re in the hospital,” Winry said, her voice small. “Ed- do you know what happened?”

“No-I-...,” Ed stammered. Cold dread crept up his spine with its icy fingers, and it occurred to him in that moment that neither Al or his mother were in the hospital room with him. “Winry- where are my mom- and- and Al?”

“You were in a- a car crash, Ed,” Winry says. “Aunt Trisha…she didn’t make it.”

Ed felt hysteria begin to sink its cold claws into his brain. “Where’s Al?” he tried to shout. Al couldn’t be dead. Not Alphonse. Not him. _Not him!_

“Al’s in a coma, Ed,” Winry said shakily. Her voice was thick, like she was seconds away from bursting into tears. “The doctors aren’t sure if he’ll wake up.”

Ed’s mouth opened, ready to ask more questions, when the door clicked open. A female nurse with short-cropped dark brown hair walked in, her steps quiet but businesslike.

“I’m Nurse Ross,” she said, her expression gentle. “How are you feeling, Edward?”

“I- fine, I guess.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, we’re going to take a look at your arm and leg and make sure they’re healing okay, then I have some questions for you.”

Ed felt more off balance than ever- if that was even possible. What was wrong with his arm and leg? They weren’t in pain- he couldn’t even feel them.

With quick, sure movements of her fingers, the nurse pulled back the flimsy light blue hospital-issue sheet.

“The sites seem to be healing well,” she said to Pinako. “He’ll be a good candidate for prosthetics, in my opinion.”

“Prosthetics?” Ed shrieked, and immediately regretted it when his still-tender throat burned.

Winry looked at him, her eyes wide like a deer about to be hit by a car.

“Oh, Ed...,” was all she said.

Carefully, Ed craned his aching neck to look down at his body. Where his right arm and left leg had been only days ago were now two neatly white-bandaged stumps.

“How…How did I not notice that sooner?” he said, bewildered. If he wasn’t seconds away from breaking down in hysterical sobs, he might have laughed at himself. What kind of person doesn’t notice they’re missing two whole limbs?

Winry laughed wetly. She’d given up holding back her tears and they were now streaming silently down her cheeks.

The nurse gave Pinako a look, as if asking permission to deliver the bad news, then she began to explain. “The surgeon had to amputate, unfortunately. Both your arm and your leg were crushed in the car wreck, and there was no way to save them. I’m sorry.”

Ed felt like his body was going to fly apart at the seams. It seemed like only an hour ago he’d had a mother and a brother and all four limbs, and now each of those things were being systematically ripped away from him. His eyes were hot with repressed tears that were threatening to spill at any second.

“Who- who’s gonna look after me?” he choked out. With his mom dead and his dad having left them when Ed was just six years old, he figured he’d be going into foster care soon.

“Us, of course,” Pinako said, stopping Ed’s thoughts of foster homes in their tracks. She reached out from her chair beside his bed and brushed his sweaty bangs back from his forehead. “I promised Trisha that if anything ever happened to her, I’d look after you boys.”

Ed was about to say something further when the nurse interrupted him awkwardly.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I really have to examine him further. I want to make sure there’s no neurological problems we’re not aware of.”

“Of course,” Pinako said, moving her chair aside to make room for the nurse, who stepped forward to stand beside Ed’s bed.

“I have some questions to ask you. They’re just to assess your brain function and memory, so try your best to answer- but if you can’t, that’s okay too.”

Ed nodded.

“Do you know your name?”

“Ed- um, Edward. Edward Elric.” he answered. Nodding, the nurse pulled a pen out of the pocket of her navy blue scrubs and made a note on the clipboard in her hand.

“Do you know where you are?”

“The hospital.”

She nodded again, and then asked, “Do you know what year it is?”

“Uh…it’s 2007.”

The nurse nodded for a third time, so Ed figured he was doing well.

“Okay, last question,” she said. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Um…I remember- I remember arguing with Al- my brother- about something. I don’t remember what it was. Sorry.”

The nurse wrote something on the clipboard in her hand, and then said, “You did well, Edward. I’m going to go, but a doctor will be in sometime today to discuss prosthetics with you and your guardian, okay?”

Ed nodded. He could feel his eyes threatening to slip closed again. All he wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up to find that this was all a dream.

“Go ahead and rest, Ed,” Pinako said. With that, Ed allowed his eyes to close completely and he was out again.

 ***

Ed looked around at his new bedroom, with its taupe walls and easy ground-floor access for his still-new wheelchair, and sighed. It was even tinier than his bedroom back home- _No_ , he reminded himself sharply. This little rundown three-bedroom in the city was home now. They’d moved here specifically because there was a hospital with both an excellent coma ward and prosthetics program within driving distance, and Ed was grateful for that. He _was_.

He eyed the stacks of boxes that populated the room at the moment. Each was filled with things from his and Al’s old house with their mom, the contents denoted on the sides in black Sharpie- ‘Ed+Al Personal’ one read, in Pinako’s neat block letters. Ed knew what was in that one- he’d packed it himself as best he could one-handed, painstakingly wrapping each of his and Al’s sports trophies and the silly academic awards for Honor Roll and Straight As that their mom had lovingly framed and displayed in their living room in tissue paper and neatly stacking them in that cardboard moving box- he’d needed lots of help from Winry, but he’d done it. Neither Pinako nor Winry had tried to suggest that he shouldn’t help pack his things. They’d seen that he’d needed to more than anything else.

Despite himself, Ed felt tears well up in his eyes.

I miss Mom, he thought. Right at that moment, he knew that he’d give anything to be back at his old house, having dinner with his mother and Al. They’d probably be having spaghetti and meatballs, and they’d be talking about their day in between bites- and sometimes in the middle of them, in Ed’s case. (He firmly maintained that table manners were for chumps.) His mom would tell them about all the weird customers she got at her job at the local farmer’s market, and Ed and Al would tell her about their day at school. After dinner, he and Al would change into their soccer uniforms, and their mother would drive them to soccer practice, and come pick them up when it was over. When it was time for them to go to bed, she’d come in and give Al a kiss goodnight, and then give one to Ed even though he pretended he was too old for kisses from his mom.

A tear rolled down Ed’s cheek, and he sniffled. He wanted more than anything to just wake up and find out that this whole thing was just an awful dream.

The door to Ed’s new bedroom opened with a creak, and Winry walked in. Ed quickly moved to wipe away the tear with the sleeve of his grey sweatshirt, and to school his face into an expression that said ‘I was totally not crying just now’.

“Grandma said to tell you that dinner’s almost ready,” she said. Noticing the expression on his face, she came to sit beside him, perching on the wooden bed frame topped with a bare mattress and box spring that was his bed at the moment.

“I hate this too,” she said, simply. She leaned towards him, ignoring the arm of his wheelchair that was definitely jabbing her in her side, and they sat there, watching the sky turn orange and purple as the sun set until Pinako called to them from across the house to come have dinner.

 *** 

Today was Ed’s first day at his new middle school. He swallowed back the anxious lump in his throat that threatened to choke him, adjusted the strap on his brand-new red backpack, and walked into the glass-walled office.

“Hi,” he said to the secretary.

She looked up from her computer and smiled at him. Her teeth were bright white and her lipstick was an alarming shade of pink that matched her blouse almost exactly. “New student?” she asked.

Ed nodded.

“Here’s your schedule,” she said, handing him a crisp piece of paper with, he assumed, all his classes printed on it. “Your student guide should be here soon.”

As if on cue, a taller boy with sandy blonde hair falling over one eye walked into the office. He looked unbearably cool for an 8th grader, his beat-up black backpack slung casually over his right shoulder. His band t-shirt and the green-and blue flannel shirt he was wearing over it added to the image, wrinkled just enough to look laid-back but not sloppy.

“You Edward?” he asked, turning to the shorter boy.

“Yeah,” Ed said, trying to affect a cooler persona and failing miserably.

“I’m Russell,” the boy said. “So, what’s your first class?”

Ed looked at his schedule. “Um…science, in room 204.”

“With Marcoh?”

Ed scanned his schedule for the teacher’s name and nodded.

“I’ve got that for homeroom too. The teacher’s pretty okay,” Russell said. He turned and began walking down the hall. Ed stayed standing in front of the office, unsure if the taller boy meant for him to follow.

“What are you waiting for?” Russell asked, stopping dead. His tone and expression conveyed a sort of benign exasperation at Ed’s denseness. “Come on! The morning bell’s going to ring soon!”

With that clear permission established, Ed followed Russell to their first class of the day.

By lunchtime, Ed was about 90% certain that he’d become friends with Russell.

Still, having what he was reasonably sure was a friend didn’t mean he wasn’t still anxious. His latest problem was eating. The lunch served today was roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Ed would’ve been able manage fine if it hadn’t been for the beef, which needed to be cut with a knife- and knives required a dexterity that Ed’s relatively new prosthetic arm didn’t quite have. He’d been doing occupational therapy for almost 6 months at a nearby hospital, and he was progressing incredibly fast, but doing many things were still very hard. Not wanting to risk spilling food all over himself and looking like a spastic, Ed merely sat quietly, staring at his tray of food as the people around him chatted and ate. Maybe he’d be able to buy a bag of chips later from the vending machine, he thought as his stomach growled.

“What’s wrong?” Russell asked, looking up from the gardening book he had been engrossed in to look over at Ed.

“I…um…I’m not very hungry, I guess.”

“Bullshit,” the older blonde boy said, punctuating the word by crunching decisively on a potato chip.

Ed flushed under the weight of the gaze pinned on him.

“It’s my- my arm. It doesn’t work so great yet and I can’t eat,” Ed admitted hesitantly.

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” Russell demanded, reaching into his lunchbox and handing Ed his ham and cheese sandwich in its neat little resealable plastic bag.

Gratefully, Ed took it from him.

“I’m not going to make fun of you for having trouble with your arm,” Russell said. “I’m not a total dick.”

“I know,” Ed said, too quickly.

“Whatever,” Russell replied, crunching down on another chip. Ed quickly stuffed half the sandwich in his mouth in one go, glad to end the conversation before it got too emotional.

*** 

Ed sighed in relief as the bus pulled up, five minutes late. He knew that sometimes- most of the time, probably- public transportation ran a bit late, but it was hard to be patient with the bus driver when he was going to see Al today! Running his card under the scanner at the front of the bus in order to pay the fare, he practically skipped to his preferred window seat on the left side near the back of the bus. The ten minute ride to the hospital felt like hours, and Ed jiggled his legs the whole way in an attempt to channel his nervous energy. He’d been waiting all day to see his brother, and he couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the fact that in only a few minutes, he’d finally get to see Al again. He’d been to visit his brother two days ago, too, but that didn’t prevent Ed from missing him terribly. 

Finally, _finally_ , the bus pulled up in front of the hospital. The canned female voice rang out from the speakers in the bus ceiling, announcing the name of the stop, and the bus doors creaked open. Ed was the first one out, and he had to restrain himself from running into the hospital, allowing himself to speedwalk instead. He didn’t even pause to look at the directory- months of visits had burned Al’s room and floor number into Ed’s brain-and punched the “up” button near the bank of elevators. When the set of silver doors nearest to him whispered open, Ed got in as quickly as possible, pressing the button for his desired floor without even looking. His impatience was growing by the minute, and he could barely stand the less-than-a-minute trip up to the coma ward. When the elevator doors whispered open again, this time onto the white halls and cloying antiseptic smell of the coma ward where Alphonse Elric had resided for the last half a year, Ed once again speedwalked down the hall until he reached the door with Al’s room number on it. He knocked gently twice, and when no nurse opened the door, he opened it himself.

“Hey, Al,” he said softly to his brother’s unresponsive form. After a moment of silence, Ed walked over and pulled one of the grey plastic hospital chairs that were omnipresent in Al’s room over to the comatose boy’s bedside and sat down. With his right hand, he grasped one of Al’s limp hands and held it. Ed noted sadly, as he always did, that Al’s skin was cold. Al had always seemed cooler to Ed, whose body temperature ran as hot as his temper, but the younger boy was icy now.

“I miss you,” Ed admitted to the growing shadows on the walls of Al’s silent, white room. Al did not respond- as he always had.

 ***

“Ed, we need to talk,” Pinako said one morning.

Ed looked up from his plate of toast slathered in liberal amounts of strawberry jam.

“Ab’t whuh?” he mumbled around a bursting mouthful of breakfast.

Pinako slid a sheet of paper across the table to him. Printed on it in red and black ink were his grades for the semester- a nice mixture of Cs and below.

“About that,” she said, a bit redundantly.

Ed swallowed his mouthful heavily. “I’m doing the best I can!” he said.

Pinako took a deep breath before continuing. “I know, Ed,” she said. “but I think you visiting Al so much is negatively impacting lots of things- including your grades.”

“You can’t make me stop going to see him!” Ed shouted, his face red and contorted with helpless anger. “He’s my only family, and if I don’t go to see him then who will?!”

“How can you say that?” Winry yelled. She had just come downstairs and entered the kitchen, looking for breakfast but instead finding the conflict between her grandmother and Ed. “We’re your family too, Ed! And we care about Al just as much as you do! I can’t believe you would say such horrible things about us!”

“I-I’m sorry,” Ed said helplessly. This was the most emotion he or anybody else had expressed since the day he’d woken up in the hospital, and he wasn’t sure how to react.

“I know this is hard for you,” Winry cried, “but it’s hard for us too! You’re not the only person who lost family in that car crash, Ed!”

“I know!” Ed yelled, his voice cracking from all the emotions he was trying to convey. “You don’t need to remind me, Winry!”

“I think that we all desperately need a mental health day,” Pinako announced, quickly defusing the ballooning tension in the tiny kitchen.

Winry’s expression quickly morphed from one of confused anger to one of relief.

“That sounds great, Granny! We can watch movies all day and eat popcorn!”

Both women looked over at Ed. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Sure, I guess,” he muttered. “I just don’t wanna go to school.”

Pinako looked satisfied at his rather lukewarm answer, so Ed figured he was in the clear from that particular difficult conversation. If it were up to him, Ed would never have to talk about his feelings ever again. Honestly, Ed wished he didn’t even have feelings.

“Ed, come on! You have to help us pick a movie!” Winry shouted from the living room. Ed startled and looked up from where he’d been staring blankly at his crumb-covered plate. While he’d been thinking about how much he hated feelings, both Winry and Pinako had cleaned away their plates and had moved to the beat-up green couch and matching loveseat in the living room.

With a small sigh, Ed shouted back, “Be right there!”

He tossed his dirty plate into the sink without looking and went to join all that was left of his family on the couch to watch movies.

 ***

Ed’s stomach growled loudly and insistently, snapping the boy out of the almost-doze he’d fallen into.

He looked around Al’s hospital room, noticing how dark it was suddenly. According to his phone, it was nearly 7:30. Winry and Pinako would have finished dinner by now.

_Might as well get dinner at the hospital_ , he thought.

He gently pulled his hand away from Al’s, whispering, “Bye Al- love you,” to him. Hands in the pockets of his worn red hoodie, he got in the elevator and headed down to the hospital cafeteria.

Blinking away the last of his drowsiness, he grabbed a blue plastic tray, some cutlery, and a plate and got in line. He helped himself to a portion of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a roll. He couldn’t wait to eat hot food- Pinako recently had to pick up more shifts at her workplace, and was rarely there to cook dinner. As such, Winry and Ed had been eating sandwiches for dinner for the past week or so.

“$10.50,” the bored cashier said to him.

Ed dug around in his pocket for his wallet, opening it to find it completely devoid of any cash except for an old, crumpled $1 bill.

“I, um…I don’t…,” he stammered, cheeks heating up in embarrassment. Where had all his cash gone? Last he’d checked, he’d had at least 15 dollars!

He picked up his tray, ready to throw away the food. A voice from behind him interrupted his embarrassed thoughts.

“I’ve got it,” said the tall, dark-haired man behind him. He handed over $20 to the cashier, and motioned for Ed to take his food so the line could start moving again.

“Th-Thank you so much!” Ed said, stumbling over his words in his effort to thank this stranger for his generosity.

“No problem,” said the man, smiling slightly at Ed. Despite his desire to sit alone, Ed was forced to sit at the only empty table in the cafeteria with the man who’d just paid for his dinner.

“I’m Roy,” said the man, taking a seat across from Ed. “What’s your name?”

“Ed- um, Edward,” Ed replied around a forkful of potatoes.

“Nice to meet you,” Roy said to him. With that, the two lapsed into silence, eating their dinners and letting the loud buzz of conversation coming from the other cafeteria patrons wash over them.

After a few minutes, Roy spoke again.

“So who are you visiting this evening?”

“My brother,” Ed said.

The older man nodded, picking up on Ed’s obvious lack of desire to elaborate.

“I’m here for my friend- he got stabbed by his girlfriend,” Roy said. “Poor guy- the first woman who shows interest in him turns out to be a psychopath.”

Despite himself, Ed laughed.

“Yeah, poor guy,” he said. Then it occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t be laughing about a guy he’d never met getting stabbed.

“Sorry,” he backtracked, his face heating up in embarrassment.

“No worries,” chuckled the older man. “He’d probably be glad _somebody’s_ finding the humor in this whole thing.”

Still embarrassed over his faux pas, Ed lapsed into silence. He dug into his dinner again with a bit more gusto, shoving meatloaf and potatoes into his mouth so that if the older man decided to ask more questions he’d have an excuse not to answer. Luckily, they both finished quickly, and had places to go immediately afterwards, so there weren’t any more conversations.

After Ed had returned home, it occurred to him that Roy had never asked him where his parents were. In all of his encounters with other adults at the hospital, their first question was always about Ed’s lack of parental supervision. Ed decided that he liked the older man.

 For the next several weeks, nearly every day that Ed visited the hospital, he saw Roy. They didn’t often stop and have conversations- mostly they just said a simple “hello” to each other when they passed by each other in the hall or in the hospital cafeteria, but it was enough.

“See you Thursday!” Ed said to Roy one Monday evening as they were both walking out of the hospital’s main entrance- Roy to his car, and Ed to the nearby bus stop.

Roy paused, looking apologetic.

“Actually,” he began, “My friend’s getting released tomorrow. Sorry, kid.”

“I’m not a kid!” Ed scowled. Neither of them commented on how he ignored the rest of Roy’s statement entirely.

Ed felt weirdly betrayed, which was stupid, in his opinion. Roy was just some guy who he’d bonded with over having to constantly be in the hospital. They weren’t friends. They weren’t even close to the same age.

_Stop being such a baby_ , Ed scolded himself. _This isn’t even worth being upset over. You barely know the guy._

Despite his decision to not be upset, Ed still felt distraught for the next few days. He’d forgotten how lonely the hospital was before he’d met Roy. Al couldn’t talk back when Ed told him about his day, and his interactions with the doctors and nurses were curt and polite. Sure, he talked to Winry and Pinako, and his friends at school, but Winry and Pinako treated him with kid gloves all the time, and his school friends didn’t know anything about his situation beyond what they could guess. His interactions with Roy had always been easy and free of any sort of judgement. Ed hadn’t even known how nice that was until he didn’t have it any more.

_Still_ , Ed told himself, _you can’t dwell on stuff like that. Being sad’s for kids. And you’re not a kid, are you?_

Ed resolved to put this whole thing out of his mind and focus on other things. Right now, the only thing that was important was doing well in school so he could get a job as soon as possible and help Pinako out with Al’s hospital costs. That was all that was important- after all, he was the man of the house.

 *** 

Ed was awakened at 5a.m. one morning by the phone ringing. He waited sleepily for a few moments for Pinako or Winry to pick it up, before remembering that Pinako was already at work, and Winry slept like the dead at all times. Groggily, he got out of bed, bare feet shuffling on the cold hardwood floor.

“Hello?” Ed said in a sleep-thick voice, picking up the phone off the cradle.

“Is this the family of Alphonse Elric?” asked an unfamiliar, businesslike female voice.

“Um- yes. I’m his brother, Edward.”

“Wonderful,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “We’re calling to inform you and the rest of Alphonse’s family that there’s been a change in his status.”

Ed’s heart caught in his throat.

“What does that mean?” he choked out.

“I can’t discuss the details over the phone, but Alphonse has awakened from his coma.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! If there are any errors or inaccuracies (particularly medical ones) please let me know and I'll do my best to fix them. I really really really love kind comments, so please leave them! I am not exaggerating when I say they literally make my day. Even just a few words really makes me happy.


End file.
